Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.

-- Frederic Chopin

He who sings scares away his woes.

-- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

-- W. Somerset Maugham

This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly than ever before.

-- Leonard Bernstein